Monday, August 18, 2014

Good News!

I get another opportunity to do more PCB design!

Good news everyone!

I picked up my PCBs today and I am super excited! But I did find an error that might just make them unusable. Getting it right the first time obviously would have been a lot better, but hey, shit happens.

There's actually two problems. The first being that I completely missed the USART pin header. As in I never put down the pads or traces! No idea how that one happened. Maybe I should have some sort of documentation or checklist to ensure I meet my own specification. I could probably get around this omission by soldering the required connections directly to the microcontroller pins.

The second problem is where i'm stuck. Seems I got the pads wrong for the multilock connector at the top of the board. The holes are just too small. I could drill out the holes to be bigger, but I don't think it's going to turn out well with a 1mm drill bit on a hand drill.

I'd like to hear if anyone has any ideas on how to fix this. Otherwise it's not too bad to do another run of PCBs. For now it's back to uni work :)